Shari Redstone is emphatic: ViacomCBS has plenty of resources and the scale to compete in the new world order for media giants."We absolutely have enough scale," Redstone said Friday morning during her Q&A held as part of the Paley Center for Media's International Council Summit in New York. "We have an incredible library. We have incredible IP. We spend over $13 billion on content. We can compete with the best of them."Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Viacom and CBS, was...
ViacomCBS
Shari
Redstone
Chairman
Redstone declared in 2021 that the media giant she leads is not your father’s Viacom, “and it’s not my father’s, either.” Indeed, while her father, Sumner Redstone, founded the original incarnation of the company, it was she who orchestrated its controversial $30 billion reunification with CBS in 2019. Post-merger, ViacomCBS is focusing on streaming with a rebranded Paramount+ and pledging to double its content spending to better compete. Redstone has shown she’s unafraid to shake things up, pushing Jim Gianopulos out as studio chief in September. Meanwhile, no discussion of media M&A is complete without speculation on whether Redstone is a seller or buyer. For now, partnerships seem her focus, as evidenced by the formation in August 2021 of the SkyShowtime joint venture with Comcast in Europe.